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Dozens arrested in pipeline protest on Parliament Hill

The demonstration was organized by Greenpeace and other groups who say the 2,700-kilometre pipeline from Alberta to Texas is harmful to the environment in both Canada and the United States.

An estimated 500 people gathered on Parliament Hill on Monday, Sept. 26, 2011, to protest the Keystone XL pipeline. Protesters say the pipeline, planned from Alberta to Texas, will hurt the environment in both countries. (Bruce Campion-Smith / Toronto Star) | Order this photo

By Joanna SmithOttawa Bureau

Mon., Sept. 26, 2011

OTTAWA — Jo Wood, 72, sat with her knees tucked up against her floral blouse behind the barricade, her light sun hat contrasting with the dark pants of the police officer standing guard behind her.

“I don’t want to say I didn’t do everything I could to try to stop this thing, because I think it’s so awful,” said Wood, a retired psychology professor in Ottawa, as she explained why she volunteered to be arrested by stepping over a metal perimeter fence set up by the police on Parliament Hill on Monday.

“This thing” is the 2,700-kilometre proposed Keystone XL pipeline extension that would transport oil from Alberta to the southern United States. Activists argue it would be harmful to the environment on both sides of the border.

Greenpeace and other groups organized a demonstration on Parliament Hill on Monday to express their disagreement with the Conservative government for having approved the $7 billion TransCanada Corp. pipeline extension and protest oil sands development in general.

“I feel that the tar sands (are) a terrible, terrible mistake,” said Wood. “We’ve got to stop it. I have a granddaughter and I want her to grow up in a world that is not totally poisoned.”

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RCMP Sgt. Marc Menard said just over 100 people were arrested after they climbed the short metal fence marked with yellow police tape and a sign warning them not to cross.

They came in waves of small groups of people, holding hands and marching to the beat of native drumming, then hopped over the fence — sometimes with the help of stepstools set up on either side — to be taken into police custody.

Menard said they were arrested under the Criminal Code for obstructing police, but were released without criminal records after Ottawa police issued them a $65 ticket for trespassing and an order to stay away from Parliament Hill for one year.

About 300 others cheered them on from the lawn, singing traditional protest songs — with updated lyrics to incorporate their fight against climate change — and advising others who wished to cross to get instructions and legal advice from organizers.

“This is a time-honoured practice for us to say in a peaceful way that we are going to disobey the laws that we consider to be unjust and we are going to take a stand and put ourselves on the line,” Maude Barlow, national chair of the Council of Canadians told a crowd of about 500 people gathered on the lawn of Parliament Hill before she joined the first group of protesters to cross the fence and be led away in plastic cuffs.

One man in a wheelchair was arrested after he wheeled up to the barricade, was helped out of his chair and then carried over the fence by a fellow protester.

The Conservative government called them extremists.

“The NDP members should stop taking the side of the extremists who want to kill Canadian jobs,” Conservative MP David Anderson, the parliamentary secretary to Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver, said in the Commons in response to a question from NDP environment critic on Monday.

“They have made it clear they want to shutter our new development of the oil sands. They are willing to destroy hundreds of thousands of jobs across the country. They can go outside and join with those dozens of protesters. We are going to stand with the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who depend on those oil sands.”

New Democrat House leader Thomas Mulcair told reporters he would “let other people use the name-calling to their own effect” but called for sustainable development.

“No person in their right mind would call for the shutdown of the tarsands,” Mulcair told reporters outside the Commons on Monday, although some of the protesters outside were chanting for exactly that.

“It’s too an important part of our economy, but what we can do is simply apply basic rules of sustainable development.”

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